


Jump Shot

by speakingwosound (sev313)



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-19
Updated: 2018-06-19
Packaged: 2019-05-25 14:29:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14979134
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sev313/pseuds/speakingwosound
Summary: “You said, once, that I should find you if I found another candidate I cared about.”Barack Obama loses the 2008 Democratic Primary.  A decade later, Tommy runs for Senate.





	Jump Shot

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the [Dan Week](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/comeonandslamandwelcometothedan) Day 3 prompt “basketball”

Dan lifts up, pointing his fingers as the ball spirals off his hand-

"Dan?"

-and hits the backboard with a metallic clunk, before bouncing aimlessly against the blacktop.

Dan turns, his eyes wide. "Tommy?" He glances back at his team of blueshirts. "Tawny, sub for me?"

"Right on, boss," she grins, giving him a low five as she jogs into the game.

"Your, ahh, secretary said I'd find you out here," Tommy says, backing up as Dan joins him on the sidelines. "Hope that's okay?" He stops when Dan's only a few inches away, swinging his messenger bag behind his hip.

"As long as you don't mind the, ahh-" Dan wipes his palms against his shorts, grimacing.

Tommy grins, the same lopsided, smug grin he's been smiling for a decade. "I don't care."

Dan holds back _not the first impression I'd like to be making_ in the face of seeing Tommy, here, in the back parking lot of the mayor's office Dan has tried so hard to make his over the past few years. All Tommy has to do is smile and he’s rendering all Dan’s hard work mute as he sends Dan hurtling back to thirty-two again, sweating in the Iowa sun, with corn fields and clipboards and thoughts of _hope_ and _change_ all around him. 

On the basketball court, Tawny yells in victory and Dan pulls himself back to the present. He blinks. "What are you doing in Delaware?"

Tommy shrugs, his face an open, unreadable plane. "Can't I come visit an old friend without an ulterior motive?"

Dan snorts.

Tommy's shoulders fold inwards and he shoves his hands in his pockets. "I, ahh, have a proposition for you. Is there somewhere we can go and talk?"

"Yeah. There's a diner-" Dan glances at Tommy's suit and MTA-map tie. He looks out of place here, his slick hair and unscuffed dress shoes incongruous in Dan’s life where he once was an everyday occurrence. “There's a diner at the end of the block. Let me shower, then I’ll meet you there in ten?”

"Sure." Tommy takes another step back, glancing to his left, as if he can see down the end of the block from behind the mayor's office. "Down the street?"

Dan nods, and doesn't turn to watch Tommy walk away. He's had enough of those images to last him his current lifetime and a few reincarnations.

***

Kim - of Kim and Sarah’s Midnight Diner - greets him at the door with a wink. Her long, red nails dig into his elbow as she pulls him towards a table in the back, close to the kitchen and far away from the door, whispering, “there's a handsome young man waiting for you.”

Dan shakes his head, emphasizing, “a colleague,” even as Tommy comes into view and Dan’s chest twists.

Kim nods, knowingly, as Dan takes his seat. She takes out her notepad. “The usual, I assume?”

Tommy looks from Kim to Dan and asks, “the usual?” with an edge of something thrilling and unfair in his voice.

“Turkey club,” Dan offers.

Tommy nods and orders the same. Dan watches him watch Kim head back to the kitchen and hand the ticket and a kiss across the counter to Sarah. Tommy’s eyes widen, and he turns back in his chair, looking self-satisfied. “So, ahh, how long has it been?”

Dan has not missed him. Dan’s always been good at lying to himself. “Jon and Lovett’s wedding. So, ahh-”

“Two years,” Tommy offers quickly, with a shrug. “They just celebrated their anniversary. Took a trip to Italy before, ahh-”

Dan thinks he's running through the same memories Dan is - the cabin in Palm Springs, drunk on San Diego craft beer and desert flowers and a sense of joy that overflowed from Jon and Lovett to paint everything else, Tommy spread out against the rose-colored sheets, pale and flushed and pushing into Dan’s hands - until Tommy shakes himself, reaching into his messenger bag and pulling out a pin.

He flips it between his fingers. “You said, once, that I should find you if I found another candidate I cared about.”

“That was a very long time ago.” _Ten years ago_. Fuck.

“I know.” Tommy shrugs. “I was kinda hoping that it still stands?”

“That depends.” Dan’s heart thumps against his rib cage.

“On what?”

Dan snorts. “On the candidate.”

“What would you say about-” Tommy flips over the pin, holding out his palm so Dan can read it.

_Tommy Vietor for Senate 2018_

Dan’s throat is dry and cracked. “You?”

“Me,” Tommy breathes. He holds his palm out until his arm starts to shake, then he closes his fingers. “It's a terrible idea, isn't it?”

“No,” Dan says, too quickly. Because, no, Tommy running for Congress is- a devastating wrench in the quiet, deliberate, rewarding life he's built for himself, but- “No, of course not. Tommy, that’s a wonderful idea.”

Tommy’s entire face splits into joy, his worry lines smoothing away the decades between Iowa and now. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Dan agrees, as Kim brings over their food. He's not hungry, per say, but he only has so many more of these club sandwiches in his future. “Walk me through your ten point plan.”

***

The Vietor 2018 offices are in a stripmall in the Boston suburbs. It’s nestled between a local Joe’s Coffee Shop and a Boston Market in what used to be a Blockbuster - the outline of the ticket stub is still faint on the facade - with ample parking and what Dan sincerely hopes is a low price tag.

The office is busy as Dan pushes open the glass doors. It’s filled with people, mostly young, pretty, smartly-dressed interns with plastic name tags around their necks and lawn signs in their hands. Dan sees Lovett immediately, though, sitting on a table by an intern’s desk, tapping his fingers anxiously against his knee as he stares daggers at the phone in the intern’s hands. “If you can’t fix I can take it down to that racquet on Somerset. They’ll charge an arm and a leg, but at least I trust them not to lose my shit at the risk of losing my money. You just work for me and I don’t pay you- do I pay you?”

The intern sweeps her braid over her shoulder and doesn’t look up from Lovett’s phone. “The Vietor campaign pays me. Are you the CFO on this campaign?”

“He wishes,” Dan answers.

Lovett looks up, face already screwed into annoyance and halfway through what Dan is sure is a well-deserved tirade, when he catches sight of Dan. “You’re early,” he pivots, hopping off the table and pulling Dan into a one-armed hug. “The interns are hell-bent on destroying my phone.”

The intern rolls her eyes, finally looking up from Lovett’s phone. “He dripped Diet Coke on it,” she corrects, holding out her hand. “I’m Mia.”

“Nice to meet you. I’m, the, ahh-”

“New communications director, I know.” She rolls her eyes, but returns back to her work. “Tommy hasn’t stopped talking about you all week. It's obnoxious.”

“So I have that to live up to,” Dan tries to joke.

She huffs as she cracks Lovett’s phone in two and lays its parts open on her desk. Lovett shivers and he wraps his left hand around Dan’s elbow, his wedding ring shining in the high artificial lighting as he tugs Dan towards a row of mostly-empty offices.

“This is mine,” he says, pointing to the first one, with _Political Liaison_ printed in Tommy’s preferred font beside the door. “That's Tanya’s - she's our director of outreach. Jon and Tommy are down the hall-” He waves towards the end of the corridor, where the candidate and chief of staff offices are a little separated. “And this is you.”

Lovett flicks on the light and frowns. “They were supposed to spruce it up a bit. Wait-” He jogs out and returns with a bronze eagle statue, holding it by its talons. “Patriotism,” he offers, setting it on the edge of Dan’s desk. “Almost like a real campaign.”

“Almost,” Dan chuckles, slinging his briefcase onto the chair and glancing around. It's barebones. Tommy might have worked for Senator Obama for over a decade before a short stint at the UN, but he's still a relative unknown in Massachusetts politics. Every spare campaign dollar is going to Facebook ads and rallies and donuts to keep the staff happy and engaged. “I work in local politics,” Dan adds, to smooth it over. “This is an upgrade.”

“The food selection is a downgrade from the writers’ room,” Lovett shrugs, “but I'm working on that. I know Tommy wanted to see you, but they're at the governor’s debating the debates.” Lovett rolls his eyes. “So grab a sign and some walking shoes. We're going canvassing.”

“They let you canvas?” Dan asks, as he digs his sunglasses out of his bag. “That seems counterproductive.”

“Haha,” Lovett fake laughs. “I have a secret weapon. Two, actually.”

Lovett’s secret weapons do the charm. Dan has never actually canvassed with Lovett before - he'd been knocking doors for the other side in Iowa and New Hampshire and Illinois, and by the time he joined the Obama Senate office a few years later, Dan had already retreated to Delaware - but he's surprisingly good. Honest and engaging, humor smoothing over his inability to remember names even thirty seconds after he learns them and Pundit and Leo sanding over any edges that the humor doesn’t get.

He offers Dan Leo’s leash about half-an-hour in, but Leo watches Pundit and Lovett with dark, forlorn eyes whenever he's more than a few feet away. Besides, even a goldendoodle can't hide the way Dan has to flip through a packet of Tommy’s policy positions every time a constituent asks a question.

It does feel good, though. The salt in the air is not the same as dust from Iowan corn fields. The elegant townhouses are jarring against Dan's memories of sprawling, rundown colonials in New Hampshire. Tommy’s constituents are informed on Wall Street and banking reform and campaign finance caps, but if Dan closes his eyes he can remember similar conversations about expanding the school year and welfare restrictions in South Carolina and Northern Florida and Nebraska.

Dan hadn't thought he'd been missing national politics. He likes working in Delaware. He likes that his decisions have real, concrete, measurable consequences. New street lights that save ten lives a year. Grants for public parks that he can walk by on his lunch break to see children climbing across the jungle gyms. Tax breaks that lead to a 7% increase in local businesses and have saved Kim and Sarah’s diner four years running.

Dan loves that. But he's missed this, too. Debating philosophical differences and high level policies. Arguing for argument’s sake. Meeting skepticism with new ideas and watching constituent’s eyes widen with their minds.

When they're done for the day - after they return to the office and order pizza and beer and Lovett, apologetically, heads home with the restless dogs - Dan heads back to Tommy’s, alone. Dan had questioned this all over again, when he saw the key with Tommy’s note, _make yourself at home_ scrawled in his exaggerated handwriting, in the top drawer of Dan’t new desk. But the campaign is cash poor and a decade in local politics hasn't made Dan flush with cash. He'd thought about asking Jon and Lovett - had dropped a hint that Jon had countered with a laugh and either an obtuse or a gently rebuffing “Boston is so expensive, man, Lovett and I are in a one bedroom with two dogs, it's ridiculous” - but then he’d given into the inevitable.

Dan’s sitting at the dining room table with a bottle of wine and a jar of nuts he'd found in a cupboard, reading through policy books, when Tommy finally gets home. “Hey girl,” he murmurs, and Dan can hear the jingle of Lucca’s collar as she greets her dad at the door. “Were you good for the sitter?”

“Good for the sitter,” Dan offers. “Not so good for me.” Which, on the surface, is an understatement. She'd lain down on the living room floor the moment Dan relieved the dog sitter, her head on her paws, whimpering forlornly in Dan’s direction for over an hour.

“She doesn't know you,” Tommy offers, as he appears in the doorway. His tie is already hanging loose around his shoulders, the top few buttons on his shirt undone, and he sighs heavily as he drops his bag into a chair. “She’ll love you once she gets to know you.”

“I wouldn't be so sure,” Dan offers. “I'm batting oh for two with doodles today.”

“Leo doesn't count.” Tommy waves him away. He crosses over to the hutch and pulls out a wine glass. His belt is hanging low on his hips, his shoulders hunched, a little, in exhaustion.

Dan _has_ to stop cataloguing these things.

Tommy turns, a bright smile splitting his face despite his posture. He reaches for the wine. “He has separation anxiety.”

“So I gathered.” Dan takes the wine back from Tommy, refilling his own glass.

Tommy pulls out a seat, letting Lucca climb into his lap even though she's much too big for it, and reaches for the closest policy pamphlet. “Education?”

Dan nods. He holds up the one he's reading. “And banking. And-” He shuffles through them. “Harbor cleanup and healthcare - I have a few bones to pick with you about that one - and Iraq and-” he holds up the thickest one- “Syria. I don't understand every third word in this one.”

Tommy laughs. His fingers are long and pale, reflected through the rose reflection of his wine glass. “Do you want to start with Syria or healthcare?” His eyes flash, blue and open, like he's laying himself bare, in the comfort of his own home. The way he's done in a handful of hotel rooms across the decade of their friendship. The way he always does, before Dan wakes up with salt on his tongue and regret thick and muddy in his stomach.

It would be so easy to fall back into that well-worn rut. Easy and simple and so fucking dangerous.

“Healthcare,” Dan decides, trying to keep his voice as steady as he can, as he tosses the relevant packet at Tommy’s chest and forces a yawn. “Read up. There will be a quiz at breakfast.”

Tommy gawks at him, eyes wide and skin white around his lips, before he crumples into laughter. “No one speaks like that to me anymore.”

Dan shrugs. “I knew you when.”

“Yeah.” Tommy swallows, that open look darkening. He licks the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, you did. You do.”

“So, ahh,” Dan backs away, swallowing hard, “you'll have to do a lot more than run for Congress to convince me you aren't that same, naive, feather-haired boy from Iowa.”

Tommy laughs, throwing his head back. “You're here to remind me that I am that same boy.”

“Yeah,” Dan swallows, _that's what I'm afraid of_. “Healthcare, breakfast,” he orders, then makes a calculated retreat to the guest bedroom.

***

Over the next few weeks, Dan slips into a routine that's a decade old as if it were yesterday’s. Eighteen hour days of canvassing and voter rallies and meet and greets, followed by spirited policy debates over pizza and boxes of Chinese take-out, with a salad or two thrown in whenever Jon starts to get worried about Lovett’s grease intake. Dan’s stomach protests the food and his feet protest the walking, but he relishes falling into bed every night, exhausted and satisfied. Too exhausted and too satisfied to let his mind wander to the room down the hall, where Tommy is getting ready for bed, pulling off his tie, brushing his teeth, stripping down to the pale expanses of skin Dan tries not to imagine in those few moments between waking and sleeping.

Tommy is-

Tommy is everything Dan remembers, rendered all the sweeter with age. He talks animatedly about Syria, his long fingers waving in the air as he argues his positions with articulations beyond the “terrorists bad, democracy good” he tried on constituents in 2008. In the mornings, he's short-tempered and tousle-haired, but his face lights up when he gets out on the road, shaking hands and kissing babies, flushed and wind-blown. He still snaps when he's tired - just last week Dan had walked into Jon’s office to see Tommy lying on the floor, taking campaign calls on speakerphone - but generally he apologizes for it afterwards, now. 

On a Monday a few weeks after Dan arrives, though, Tommy yells at an intern for spilling a Diet Coke Lovett had inadvertently left on her desk. Lovett takes the fall and the lashing in Tommy’s office about “running a national campaign” and “needing to impress the important people coming through this office,” but the girl is still shaking when Dan pulls her aside for a coffee and to distract her with a few tweets.

On Tuesday, Joe’s Coffee Shop next door gives Tommy tuna on rye instead of turkey on wheat. Jon’s knuckles are tight around Tommy’s shoulder when they return with two new sandwiches and a $100 gift card. Dan pretends to use it to buy afternoon donuts and coffee for the staff, but slides Joe his credit card instead.

On Wednesday, they have a Q and A at the library. It's supposed to be an easy, casual reading of _Rebel Girls_ for story time, then a few questions from parents, until Tommy answers “how the hell should I know? Our Tweeter-in-Chief is an idiot” to a question about Donald Trump. Elijah shuts down the discussion quickly, but Dan and the rest of the comms staff stay late into the night cleaning it up with the local papers.

On Thursday, senior staff stays late to work on Tommy’s education policy paper. They hole up in the main conference room with a white board and Tommy’s original drafts, until Dan’s eyes are scratchy and the dogs have had enough.

“Hey,” Tommy snaps his fingers near Pundit’s nose. She glances from Tommy’s hand to the door and barks. Tommy snaps his fingers again. “Stop, Pundit, stop fucking barking.”

“Okay.” Lovett slams his laptop closed. “That's it. You've alienated everyone this week. Your staff, your constituents, the nice people next door who make us lunch every day even though we are not nice to them. I'm not gonna let you yell at my dog, too.”

“Lovett-” Jon says, slowly, trying to interrupt his roll.

Lovett waves him away. “The dogs have been cooped up for hours. They need to be fed and watered and let out of this damn glass box. And-” Lovett holds up his hand, cutting Jon off before he can even try and interrupt again. “We've been cooped up for hours, too. I need feeding. And watering. We're going out.”

Elijah finds a bar nearby with an outdoor beer garden and a dog-friendly dress code. He also orders pitchers of beer and baskets of fries for the table, so they can start the moment they arrive.

They swap war stories as they work through the first few rounds of pitchers. “I remember,” Tommy says, laughing long before he gets into it, “this one time. We were - where? North Carolina?”

“South,” Dan offers, rolling his eyes.

“Right, South.” Tommy smiles down the table, like there aren't two seats between them, like Dan hadn't orchestrated it this way. “So, Plouffe - our campaign manager, David Plouffe-”

“We know who Plouffe is,” Elijah says, from behind the iPhone he's using to record all of this for - Dan hopes - posterity or - more likely - for the Vietor 2018 Twitter account. “We do work for _you_.”

Tommy chuckles. “Yeah, yeah, I repeat the same stories. I'm getting old. I'm running for Congress. Sue me.” He pauses. “Actually, don't, that wouldn't be good for the campaign.”

“Anyway,” Dan interrupts, picking up the story where it was before Tommy derailed it. “Plouffe used to send Tommy and I out to canvas every morning.” He drops his voice an octave. “'Talk to the people, Pfeiffer. That's the only way to know if you're really winning.’”

“Meanwhile,” Jon adds, “Axe had, like, a six-inch binder full of polling that he carried everywhere he went. He'd labeled it with a big sticker, 'polls.’” 

Lovett laughs as he reaches for his beer. “Also that Plouffe impression was bad. We should work on that.”

“Yeah, I'm never doing that one again,” Dan agrees. “So, Plouffe would send us out in pairs. Tommy and I would go together. He was-”

“Charismatic and passionate?” Tommy offers.

“Intense. A little scary, even,” Dan corrects. “I, on the other hand, was gruff and a little bit awkward.”

Tommy tilts his head. “More awkward, less gruff.” He finishes his beer and reaches for the pitcher. 

“That's fair.” Dan shrugs. “So, we were in South Carolina, Tommy and I were knocking on doors, and this elderly Southern lady answers the door. She invited us in, offered us cookies and iced tea. We thought, hey, good opportunity to make a real connection with a voter, Plouffe will give us at least a grunt when we get back. So Tommy started eating her cookies and talking about universal healthcare-”

“Don't lay this on me, this was not my fault.”

“This was entirely your fault.” Dan glares at Tommy, hoping it covers the way his mouth is twitching upwards. “One minute, Tommy’s talking about the individual mandate and the next she was pouring iced tea over my head.”

Tommy’s choking with laughter, bent in half against the table. “You should have seen it. Clumps of sugar _everywhere_. Dan was still shaking ice out of his shirt as she was chasing us away with her cane.”

Dan chuckles, remembering what it felt like, standing on that stoop in South Carolina. The sun hot on their backs. Tommy’s hands hot around his neck and under his shirt and just dipping past his waistband, flicking away water and sugar and ice and leaving behind bright trails of light everywhere he touches.

Dan's still thinking about it when, an hour and a handful of beers later, Tommy falls into the chair next to him. “I'm sorry I've been such a dick.”

Dan laughs. “I knew what I was getting into when I accepted this job.”

Tommy frowns, the halfway frown he uses when he's buzzed. “That's not- I want you to want to be here.”

“I do.” Dan reaches out, squeezing Tommy’s knee, feeling how warm he is through his suit pants. “Shit, Tommy, I do.”

“And,” Tommy continues, “I want you to want to be somewhere else right now.”

Dan closes his eyes, imagines himself pulling away. Imagines himself removing his hand from Tommy’s knee. Imagines himself ordering a glass of water and an Uber, begging Jon and Lovett for just one night on their couch. Imagines being a big enough man to do any of those things.

He squeezes Tommy’s knee. “I'll call us an Uber.”

***

The first time Dan woke up in Tommy’s bed, he was thirty-two and heartbroken. Dan remembers it in flashes of pale skin and pleasure, his hand around Tommy and Tommy’s breath, ragged and broken, in his ear.

He remembers the handful of times since with much more clarity, but he treasures the first time the most. The way Tommy looked, sheets pooled around his waist, smiling at Dan like, maybe, just a few hours in Dan’s arms could wash away the disillusionment that comes with a first election loss. The way Dan felt, like, maybe, Tommy was the answer to all the Party’s progressive problems.

Dan feels like that, now, when he wakes to Tommy’s fingers on his arm, warm and distracting. “Morning,” he croaks, his head feeling just as fuzzy as it did that first time, with a lot less alcohol but a lot more years pounding against his forehead.

“Morning,” Tommy grins. “Coffee?”

“Yeah,” Dan says, then, “this can't happen again.”

Tommy purses his lips, but doesn't look away, not like he did that first time, with tears in his eyes that had more to do with his impending flight back to the Senate office and less to do with Dan’s carefully-worded let down.

“You’re running for Congress,” Dan continues, rising onto his elbows, reaching out to wrap his fingers around Tommy’s wrist. He can’t help the way his thumb traces Tommy’s lifeline. “You’re going to be so good, Tommy. I can’t stand in the way of that.”

Tommy leans forward for a beer-soaked, sleep-fuzzy kiss. “If we’re going to have this conversation again, coffee first.”

***

They don’t have the conversation, not that first morning and not any of the mornings that follow. Over the next few weeks, Dan falls into a new routine, one he’s only caught glimpses of over the years. A routine that starts every morning with Tommy leaning against the kitchen counter in his boxers, drinking orange juice from a small cup as he waits for their coffee to percolate. A routine that ends every evening with Tommy’s head on the pillow next to his, smiling smug and satiated.

In between waking and sleeping, however, the routine is the same. Meeting fans, selling policies, preparing for Tommy’s first debate. As the day of the debate draws closer, Tommy’s spending the majority of his time reading thick foreign policy biographies, while his senior staff walks the highline between unwavering encouragement and gentle nudges in better directions. 

“Try not to sound _so much_ like Paul Ryan,” Lovett suggests, mid-afternoon a couple days before the debate. “Unless you- I don’t think you sat around keggers at Kenyon and discussed weapons deployment in Syria, but if you did I’m sorry. For that, not for my thing.”

Tommy glances down at his notes. “Free market economies and healthcare insurance markets. And asses, sometimes.” He glances at Dan out of the corner of his eye and Dan chokes. He reaches for a water bottle to cover it.

“Maybe leave the first one out,” Dan offers.

“Maybe leave all three of those out,” Lovett mutters. “‘Free market economies.’ What Party are you even for?”

“Massachusetts.” Tommy narrows his eyes. “My constituents believe in the free market and social liberation.”

Lovett throws up his hands. “Everything Plouffe said about talking to voters? Throw all that out the window, we’re locking Tommy in a Progressive basement until this is over.”

Dan laughs, “that’s a thought,” before glancing down at his sheet of debate questions. “Let’s move on to immigration.”

“Wait.” Jon frowns over his tablet. “I wanna go back to the asses thing.”

Tommy’s face twists. “I guess it would make me seem accessible?”

“No, not-” Jon drops his tablet into his lap. His face is a fascinating shade of red. “I don't want you to talk about keggers at all. I want you to be prepared for, ahh, questions.” Jon’s eyes flick towards Dan, then back to Tommy. “About the rumors.”

Tommy leans his elbows against his podium and shrugs. “The gay rumors.”

“Yeah.”

Dan swallows. He doesn't know if Jon’s eyes are on him because the rumors are about him, or if Jon’s worried about Dan’s reaction to rumors about other men. Neither matters. Dan isn't here for this. Dan is here to get Tommy elected to Congress, because Tommy is the most thoughtful, hard-working, driven person he's ever met and the people of Massachusetts deserve his advocacy more than Dan ever has.

Dan shakes his head. “‘No comment.’”

Jon glances down. “I know that I'm biased, but, is ‘no comment’ really the best direction here?”

Dan looks right at Tommy, willing him to remember the conversations they've had over and over again, even if they haven't actually had it during this iteration of their- whatever it is they're doing. Their inevitable fall towards each other, with all the adrenaline and fear and inevitably of jumping off a bridge. “‘No comment,’” he repeats.

Tommy nods, just once, his unhappiness written all over the flush on his cheeks. “Okay.” He clears his throat. “Immigration?”

Dan flips to the relevant questions, wishing he felt more relieved and less regretful.

***

“National campaigns do not suit you,” Alyssa greets as Dan meets her at the train station. She digs through her handbag and pulls out a tube of concealer, tossing it to him. “Here. Just cause you're running a campaign again doesn't mean you can't turn a few heads.”

“Jon’s running the campaign,” Dan corrects her as he pockets the concealer. “And turning heads is the opposite of my problem at the moment.”

She hums and waits until they're in the car to say, “you never have been able to stay away from him.”

Dan sighs. “It's awfully early for berating. Can't I give you the tour, maybe buy you a cup of coffee first?”

“I've had a lot of coffee this morning,” Alyssa holds put her hand to show him how it's already shaking a little with caffeine. “All campaign HQs are the same. And I think you need to talk about it.”

Dan sighs again as he pulls onto the highway to head out to the suburbs.

“On your own time, of course,” she adds, pillowing her chin on her hand and looking out over the harbor.

“How kind of you,” Dan deadpans, then, following her eyes for a moment as he pulls into the right lane, “different from Chicago, huh?”

She smiles. “I don't know. Harbor, lake. East Coast, Midwest. Different place, same inequalities. Different candidate, same potentials.”

Dan knows she's thinking the same things he is, about winning this race, about winning more. About Vietor for President signs in 2024 or 2028. About washing away their past failures with something new.

Dan swallows. “I can't stand in the way of this,” he murmurs. “It’s too important.”

She purses her lips, but doesn't say anything more.

They pull up to headquarters and Tommy greets them at the door with a hug and a grateful, “thank you so much for doing this, Alyssa, I know you wanted out of politics and I'm so humbled by it.”

Alyssa raises an eyebrow at Dan over Tommy’s shoulder. “Who died and made you Congressional material?”

Tommy laughs as he pulls away. “I'm learning. Slowly, but I'm learning.”

“We need to be at MIT in-” Jon bustles out of his office, squinting down at his laminated schedule card.

Lovett snatches it out of his hands as he gets closer. “Dealer says fifteen minutes and an eye doctor appointment.”

Jon rolls his eyes, looking up to glare at Lovett and catching sight of Alyssa. “You're here.” He reaches out, pulling her into a hug. “Thank god.”

Alyssa laughs, squeezing his shoulder. “Go, campaign. I'll be settling in. Drinks, tonight? They're on Dan. He owes me.”

“For what?”

“For allowing you years of repression,” she answers, loftily.

Jon laughs. “Yes to drinks. And yes to campaigning. Tommy, Lovett, we've really got to go.”

They grab their jackets and bags. As they're leaving, Lovett leans close to Alyssa, “I left some flowers on your desk. And the business card for Jon’s doctors are on my desk, would you-”

“Of course.” Her face softens. “Go.”

Dan spends the morning introducing her to the staff, showing her around the filing system that's only understandable to Lovett, and introducing her to Joe’s bagels. Then he leaves her to get acquainted with her new office and her new campaign, and locks himself in his own office with the latest iteration of their social media plan.

The sun is setting when he sees her again, flush off her intro meeting with Tommy and Jon. She's leaning in his doorway, her arms crossed over her checkered overalls, looking more tired and more alive than he's seen her in months.

“So,” she says, when he glances up, taking a step inside and letting the door click behind her, “Tommy’s the real deal.”

Dan’s heart thumps painfully against his sternum. “You had concerns?”

Alyssa shrugs. “I haven't been sure of him since Iowa, unlike-” She motions towards him. “But, then again, I haven't been in love with him since Iowa, either.”

Dan sets down his tablet pen. “We're gonna do this now?”

Alyssa shakes her head. “I'm not gonna make you do anything you don't wanna do. Just-” She moves closer, putting a Vietor 2018 mug of coffee by his elbow and lifting her hip onto the edge of his desk. “I’m impressed. With the things Tommy says. He’s-” She searches for a word, settles on “matured” but frowns around it like it’s not quite right, “since Iowa. He didn’t know what he wanted, then. He knows, now.”

“Congress.” Dan reaches for the coffee, takes a long, bitter drag that he deserves.

“Among other things.” Alyssa shrugs, taking the coffee from him and frowning at it. “This is fucking awful.”

“Mia makes terrible coffee,” Dan agrees.

She hands it back, shivering as he takes another punishing sip. “All I’m saying,” she continues, “is that things that were liabilities ten years ago might be assets now.”

Dan blinks. “I’m too tired to pick apart your subtweeting.”

She squeezes his shoulder. “Just the way I like our conversations to go. Finish your coffee, drinks are still to be had tonight.”

“Hey,” Dan stops her when she’s at the door. “I entertained this conversation, so, does that mean I no longer have to pay for drinks?”

“Oh, this was only one of many conversations.” She chuckles, opening the door and pitching her voice loud enough for half the office to hear. “Better warm up your credit card.”

Dan groans and finishes his coffee.

***

“You’re not wearing your Celtics jersey.” Alyssa accuses, as she falls sideways into the seat next to Dan, crossing her legs under herself.

Dan looks down at his Vietor 2018 t-shirt and dress pants leftover from the office. “I am not.”

“I bought it, special.”

“You bought it,” Dan corrects, “because Tommy’s trying to use you to torment me. No self-respecting Sixers fan would be caught dead in Celtics gear.”

Alyssa hums. “Sixers fans on campaigns for public office in Massachusetts might find it in themselves to at least wear a hat. At least where photographers might see you.”

She shoves a green hat into his hands and he quickly hides it between his knees, before anyone can see it. Alyssa rolls her eyes.

“Stop trying to Benedict Arnold me and watch Tommy,” Dan grumbles nodding out to where Tommy, happily dressed in a Celtics jersey over his Celtics tie, stands at Center Court. He’s bouncing a basketball nervously between his fingers as he answers a few, brief questions about his campaign for the half-full crowd. 

Despite his nervousness, Tommy’s been practicing the ceremonial jump ball at lunch all week and can now throw the ball up and straight by muscle memory. Dan watches as he starts, catches the ball again, then throws it up in a perfect line.

When Tommy gets back to their box, he gets a standing ovation and a plate full of beef and pulled pork sliders. He brings them to the seat on Dan’s other side and offers them up to Dan and Alyssa.

“So, did I pass muster?” He asks.

Alyssa gives him a thumbs up, and Dan passes his phone over, with the photos the Boston Herald has already sent him for approval. “You- they look good. This little stunt is going to give you more name recognition with voters than the last three months of campaigning combined.”

Tommy groans. “Don’t tell me that. My hands ache even thinking about all the wasted handshakes.”

“Not wasted,” Dan argues. “Just, less effective.”

“Let’s just watch the game,” Tommy huffs, but he crosses his ankle over his knee and lets his toes tap, absently, against Dan’s thigh.

They sit like that for most of the game, half of Dan’s mind on basketball and half on Tommy’s foot against his thigh, on the way Tommy yells angrily at bad calls, on the way Tommy’s own thighs pull and strain when he rises to cheer. On the way Tommy looks at Dan, cheeks flushed and pale eyebrows raised in challenge, on the way his voice pitches high enough to be overheard as he suggests a bet, “winner’s choice.”

Tommy’s eyes are ice blue and dangerous. Dan remembers Sunday dinners at his grandparents’, bored enough of grown-up talk to read the stack of National Geographics on the coffee table. Pictures of glaciers in Antarctica, great, vast peaks that called to people who are more reckless and less brave than Dan ever was. Dan had always thought, vaguely, of how selfish those ice climbers have to be, to risk not only themselves but any rescue crew foolhardy and kind enough to attempt a rescue in the harshest of conditions. Dan’s always idolized those rescuers.

Dan takes the bet, anyway, and as he's reaching out his hand for a shake, Alyssa elbows his ribs.

“Fuck, what-?”

She points up at the jumbotron and, with a sinking realization, Dan hears Prince’s _Kiss_ filling the arena. The camera sweeps through the crowd and, before Dan can do much more than register the inevitability, it lands on him and Tommy, centered in a clip art red mouth and huge on every screen in the arena.

Next to him, Tommy pauses for a long moment, his eyes that same, icy blue as he stares at Dan through the prism of the camera and eighteen thousand people. Dan can feel how tight Tommy’s shoulders are as he finally looks away, rising and plastering on a smile as he waves to the crowd, pointing to the campaign logo on his hat.

“That was gold,” Lovett grins from behind them.

Alyssa reaches back to meet Lovett’s high five. “A top notch campaign outing. If I can say so while maintaining some sense of humility.”

“Oh, that ship sailed years ago,” Dan says, by muscle memory. Blood is still rushing in his ears and Tommy’s smile and shoulders and knee are tight beside him again. Dan stands, pulling out his phone and shaking it. “I'm gonna go call the Herald, make sure they run that above the fold.”

He doesn't register Tommy’s protest as he climbs across Alyssa’s knees and out of their box. He wouldn’t have stopped, anyway, as he ducks into the quiet and deserted player’s tunnel behind the President’s suite.

Dan’s not sure how long he argues with the night editor at the Herald or how long he leans against the wall, eyes closed, afterwards, before Tommy says, “hey,” from halfway down the hallway.

Dan starts, his eyes flying open. “I didn't hear you.”

Tommy shrugs, nodding at the phone clutched in Dan’s hands as he comes closer. “You were busy. Everything okay at the Herald?”

“Yeah. They're gonna print the jump shot photo. It's better, anyway.”

“Okay.” Tommy only stops when the toes of his shoes hit Dan’s. Dan can read all the lines on his face from this close, the autobiography of Tommy’s life laid bare. The Senate fight for healthcare in the divets around his eyes, his first candidate debate in the extra wrinkle across his forehead, his first presidential loss - and, Dan likes to think in his darker moments, the first moment he left Dan, lying naked in his bed - in the grooves around his mouth.

Dan’s hand twitches, wanting to reach out and touch, and Tommy smiles, every line and wrinkle deepening and strengthening. In a bright moment of clarity, Alyssa’s words come back to him. _He didn’t know what he wanted, then. He knows, now._

Tommy leans forward, closing the distance between them until Dan stops him, with a hand on his chest.

“No fair,” Tommy whispers. “Winner's choice, remember?”

Dan swallows. His lips are dry and his throat is thick. “The Celtics haven't won yet.”

“They're up 68-52 with two minutes left. They're a sure thing.” _I'm a sure thing_ , Dan hears, in the twist of his smile and flush on his cheekbones.

“I still hate the Celtics,” Dan warns, a token protest, before he lets Tommy kiss him.

***

“Don’t drop your hand right away.” Dan tosses the basketball to Lovett. “Aim where you want the ball to go with your fingers.”

“This is unnecessary,” Lovett grumbles as he makes a half-hearted attempt at a basket that soars under the backboard. “I’ve played this sport before. I spent fifteen years undergoing the humiliation of public school gym classes.”

“This is necessary,” Dan counters as he jogs to retrieve the ball. “Because you told the Herald that Tommy enjoys 'hitting the fairways’ to 'score a homerun’ while we were at the Celtics game last night.”

Lovett waves him away, missing the ball as Dan bounces it to him. “They knew I was joking.”

“They printed it.”

“They tweeted it,” Lovett shrugs, running to retrieve the ball. He’s digging it out from under a bush when the back door clicks open and Jon steps out onto the fire escape.

“Dan, Lovett,” he calls, taking the steps two at a time. He has a thick manila envelope in his hands, his knuckles white where he's gripping it. As he gets closer, Dan can see how pale and drawn he looks around his perpetual tan. “You need to see this.”

Jon holds out the envelope and Lovett takes it, flipping it over and pulling out a thick piece of newsprint.

“The Herald dropped it off a few minutes ago. A friend of mine- Josh, you remember Josh?” Lovett nods absently, and Jon continues. “He’s giving me the courtesy of a heads up, but-. They're running it.”

“I talked to that fuckwad editor last night,” Dan fumes. “I told him, if he ever wants a quote from us again, he'd better run the jump shot photo or-”

Jon shifts onto the balls of his feet nervously. “It's not that.”

Lovett wordlessly hands over the folder, the paper face up on top of it. Dan expects to see the Kiss Cam photo, complete with Tommy’s unflattering hat hair and dopey smile. He's already writing arguments in his head, composing an email and a voicemail simultaneously, when he looks down and freezes.

It's not the Kiss Cam photo the Herald sent him last night.

It's not even a more unflattering version of the Kiss Cam photo the Herald sent him last night.

Dan recognizes it, though. He recognizes the hallway behind the President’s box that he thought had been deserted. He recognizes the back of Tommy’s Celtics jersey and the sleeve of his own worn t-shirt. He recognizes the set of Tommy’s shoulders and the way Tommy’s hands frame his cheekbones. He recognizes the soft, lost look on his own face, the same look he always gets when Tommy pulls him close enough to kiss.

Dan can't hear anything but the pounding of his heart and the shattering of every hope and dream he's been holding close for over a decade, as he loses control of the car of risks he's been foolishly driving and it crashes headlong into the median. His voice sounds hollow and too loud as it bounces around the empty loading area. “Has Tommy seen this?”

“I sent him a photo.” Jon glances down at his phone. “He's been in with Senator Warren, but he'll be back any minute.”

“When?”

“Ahh.” Jon glances at Lovett, then back at Dan. He repeats, “any minute?”

“No.” Dan tries to swallow, but his throat is full of broken glass and crumpled metal. “When's it going to run?”

Jon shrugs, helplessly. “A few hours. They want a comment.”

“Yeah.” Dan slides the picture back into the folder and grabs onto decades of crisis communication training. “Yeah, we should- We need to tell them that I’m resigning.”

“That’s the most ridiculous thing-”

“The campaign can lose its communications director,” Dan interrupts Lovett. “It can’t survive a scandal like this.”

“A scandal,” Lovett repeats, rolling the words around on his tongue as he spins his wedding ring around his finger. Jon reaches out, wrapping his fingers around Lovett’s wrist to quiet him.

Dan’s chest aches.

He takes the fire escape stairs two at a time.

***

Dan’s back is to the door as he dumps his drawers into an open banker's box on the floor when he hears it click open and closed. He’d recognize the short, careful breathes Tommy uses to control his anger anywhere, though.

“So, this is it? You’re leaving?” Tommy’s breath comes in short, staccato puffs, and Dan flinches. “Were you even going to tell me?”

Dan turns, slowly. Tommy’s leaning on the inside corner of Dan’s door frame, his arms crossed protectively over his chest and his cheeks flushed.

“I thought-” Tommy shrugs, his shoulders sharp and angular. “I was hoping I-” Tommy trips over his words, his mouth tightening as he rights himself. “I was hoping this campaign meant more to you.”

“It means everything,” Dan admits, more than he’s admitted since he dropped his entire life to move to Boston because Tommy handed him a pin with his name on it. “That’s why I have to leave. You have to- this campaign has to survive this.”

Tommy shakes his head. “What is it you said to Lovett? That the campaign can survive without a communications director?”

“That you can find another communications director,” Dan corrects. “I have a list- I can make a few calls.”

“Maybe. Maybe that’s true.” Tommy shrugs, and Dan- 

Dan knows it’s true. Dan had suggested it. It doesn’t make it hurt any less, to hear Tommy agree. 

He forces himself to nod. “I’ll narrow it down to a couple of candidates and set up phone calls for the morning.”

“Maybe it’s true that the campaign can survive losing its communications director,” Tommy continues, ignoring him, “but it can’t survive without you.”

“Tommy-”

“Fuck.” Tommy’s shoulders tighten, concave around his chest. “I’m sorry, I haven’t been saying this very well. I haven’t- that day, in Delaware, I should have told you that this-” Tommy nods out at the office, “is all because of you. When you left me that day in Chicago, I promised myself that I’d become that man you saw in me. It’s taken me almost ten years, but, I thought, maybe, I’d gotten there.”

Dan can barely breath as memories of Tommy - all pale skin and sad eyes in rumbled sheets in Chicago; smiling and shy on Dan’s couch in Delaware as he talks, quietly and passionately, about leaving Senator Obama, about going to the UN, about setting himself up for _someday_ ; sunkissed and loose and almost ready in Palm Springs - pound in his ears. “You did,” Dan chokes out. “You are. You’re the best of us, Tommy. You’re going to do so much good- That’s why I have to go. Can’t you see that?”

Tommy tilts his head to the side, swallowing hard enough that Dan can see it in his throat. There’s a moment of quiet, then Tommy crosses to the desk, dropping his arms so he can trail his fingers lightly over the manila envelope. “This is it?”

Dan nods.

Tommy takes out the picture, letting it fall into his hands and staring for it as long as Dan did out in the back parking lot. Dan wishes he could read Tommy’s face the way he’s sure Jon and Lovett read his. Finally, Tommy looks up and sighs. “Well, that settles it then.”

“It doesn’t have to.” Dan takes an aborted step forwards, and stops. “I have a relationship with the Herald. Jon can call up Josh, I’m sure there’s a deal on the table.”

Tommy shrugs. “Not a deal I want to take.”

“This could sink your campaign, Tommy.”

Tommy shrugs, again, short and tempered. “Then it’s not a campaign I want to run.”

“Shit.” Dan leans back against the windowsill, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “I’m sorry. I never wanted to be the one to hold you back. This is pretty much my worst fucking nightmare.”

“You’re not holding me back,” Tommy aruges. “Shit, I’m still not saying this right.” He chuckles softly. “I thought about this scenario before I decided to run. I talked about it with Senator Obama. I talked about it with Jon and Lovett, and my mom and Taylor. I’ve talked it into the fucking ground, but I, ahh, never talked about it with you. There’s a lot of things that I’ve never talked about with you, that I should have.”

Despite himself, Dan feels a bright flash of hope. It looks like wheat field in Iowa behind his eyelids and tastes like hope and change on his tongue.

“I never had any intention of doing this without you,” Tommy continues. “I want you by my side. Whether it’s holding my hand or my briefing books, that’s up to you. I know which one I’d prefer.”

“I can’t-” Dan shakes his head through the hope rising in his chest. “Tommy-”

Tommy smiles. “I’m in love with you, Dan Pfeiffer. Have been since I was twenty-seven years old. I’m a better man when you’re around and, if you let me, I’d be a better candidate, too. Come on,” Tommy reaches out, nudging his hand against Dan’s hip. “Let’s see if Massachussetts is as liberal a state as it claims to be.”

Dan’s throat is dry and his hip burns. “You might not win.”

“I might not,” Tommy agrees. “But if Massachusetts isn’t ready to elect a gay senator, then this isn’t a state I want to represent.”

“It’s not that simple,” Dan whispers.

“It’s exactly that simple. I’m making it exactly that simple.” Tommy drops the picture back onto Dan’s desk. “I’m doing a press conference in thirty. Jon and Lovett are drafting the speech as we speak. You can be by my side or not but, either way, I’m coming out. I owe it to my constituents to tell them who they’re voting for.”

Tommy pushes off the desk, turning his head away, and before Dan even realizes he’s doing it, he reaches out to wrap his fingers around Tommy’s wrist. Tommy’s skin is warm and soft, and Dan thinks about how much of Tommy he’s been denying himself for years, while Tommy’s been using the very thought of Dan to propel himself here. _Things that were liabilities ten years ago might be assets now_ , Alyssa had said. 

Dan takes a step closer. “This is a crazy idea,” he whispers.

“Yeah,” Tommy agrees, “but, we met on a crazy idea. Why stop now?”

Dan takes a deep breath. “Okay, okay. I should read that speech.”

“You should kiss me first,” Tommy corrects. “Then you can read the speech, and we can do this press conference. Then we’re going out for drinks and I’m going to hold your hand and you’re going to call the Herald to make sure they find us. Afterwards, if I play my cards right, I’m hoping you’ll come home with me, before we do it all again tomorrow.”

“This is madness,” Dan repeats.

Tommy shrugs. “It’s gotten me this far.”

“It has,” Dan agrees, as he leans forward, closing the distance between them.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos much appreciated! Find me on [tumblr](http://stainyourhands.tumblr.com/) if you want to chat about these ridiculous boys.


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